Rubbernecking (the last gasp from underfoot)

A fuse runs through the architecture of Carriageworks, building tension as it edges towards the explosion.

This new commission by Emily Parsons-Lord explored the elemental connections between earth and the air in this pyrotechnic performance. Fireworks are coloured by minerals; copper burns blue, strontium is red, and calcium is orange. These ores are derived from the land and in a brief volatile moment, become air.

Timescales sit side by side in this performance. Geological time; cosmic time; and the immediate explosive present.

Things Fall Apart

Commissioned for Liveworks 2017, Things Fall Apart is a column of mist mixed with a plant distress pheromone (methyl jasmonate) falling into a vast circular void – viewers could step beneath the vapour column using a viewing platform, soaking in the splendour of the work while simultaneously inhaling its disaster.

Then Let Us Run (the sky is falling)

A popular proposal to halt or reverse climate change is “high stratosphere aerosol dispersion”, where a substance (sulphur, or even diamonds!) is released in the upper atmosphere to deflect solar radiation and reduce temperatures. The aesthetic consequence of this idea is the permanent removal of the blue from the sky. Instead, a murky grey/white/green will take its place.

It is cheap, easy to engineer, permanent, and short sighted.

Then Let Us Run (the sky is falling) is a new project to determine the colour of the sky were this geoengineering idea to take effect and to offer an aesthetic and tactile experience of this.

Trod By Beasts Alone

To breed pigs, farmers use HogMate; a synthesised pheromone that makes pigs uncontrollably horny (get out of the pen, it’ll have your leg). In 2016, I experienced for the first time the intoxicating impulse to sleep with men (it coincides with my ovulation), and then Trump became president. To join us you must lose yourself (a beastly itching) explores the artists sense of losing control of her desires through her chemical biology; of perverse salacious obsession; of becoming beast on breeding day.

a raging event of continual noise (the Sun)

a raging event of continual noise (the Sun) 2018

In response to Mr Lee Kun-Yong's work as part of "Equal Area" at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, I made two performance works.

The colour signature of the sun made out of potassium powder and burnt in the gallery under a sheet of suspended paper. They residue of the smoke bombs on the paper remain in the space as a star chart.

An explosive artistic diagram of my interpretation of fusion in the Sun is set to burn. A long burning fuse describes the intensifying pressure on hydrogen atoms until the fuse to make hydrogen and eject a large amount of energy and electrons (illustrated as a spectacular explosion).

Commissioned by 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art

I've Always Had Hot Hands

Our eyes were of no use to us

Our eyes were of no use to us is an installation that recreates the air from a period known as ‘The Great Dying’ and periodically releases it into the gallery space, from copper vents at the threshold of the exhibition. The Great Dying is a significant period in the history of the air as it has the lowest density of oxygen and the highest density of carbon dioxide. These conditions acidified the oceans and depleted the ready oxygen in the air contributing to the greatest extinction event in the history of life on Earth when 93-97% of species died out, 252.5 million years ago. This air is relevant today, as the rate of carbon emissions are steeper than at the time of The Great Dying; this air is the past, but also a possible future.

The Confounding Leaving

Air records invisible traces.

The Confounding Leaving is a minimal installation. A small button that, when pressed, releases "future air" over your hand, and down your arm. Or you may choose to breathe it: a visceral connection with the future of air.

Future air is not about a speculative future. It is literal. This air is a stable compound molecule that will exist in our air for the next 12-16 generations before being broken down. It does not occur naturally, but is human synthesised, made in a lab for application in industry.

Future air is sensual; it’s about six times heavier than the air that we’re used to breathing. So heavy that were you to breathe it in, your words are literally heavy as well, they dribble down your chin and drop to the floor. When inhaled, it lowers the voice.

The air is also the most potent greenhouse gas that has yet been tested. It has the warming potential of 24,000 times that of carbon dioxide.

The immediacy of this air in the gallery presents a real choice between desire, curiosity, and play, and the sensation of responsibility and connection to the future of air.

A human-made future.

The Confounding Leaving at Primavera, 2016, Museum of Contemporary Art

Documentation of The Confounding Leaving at Primavera, 2016

Different Kinds of Air, A Plant's Diary (2014)

300-350 million years ago oxygen levels were nearly double what they are today, supporting mega flora and fauna. 252.5 million years ago, the Earth experienced the greatest extinction event with 93-97% of species on land dying out and a simultaneous spike in carbon dioxide levels. The history of the atmosphere on Earth is inexorably linked to the history of life.

“Different Kinds of Air, a Plant’s Diary” offers the audience the opportunity to taste the air from some of these different eras in Earth's evolution. The gaseous composition, temperature, taste, and smell of air has changed drastically over the course of geological history, these differences affect human physiology, emotional states, and consciousness.

What do these air taste like? How do they make you feel? How do they affect your body, your consciousness and your memory?

Our Fetid Rank responds to the aesthetics of anthropogenic climate change. Alongside the tropes of retreating glaciers and melting icebergs is always a politician talking.

Captured is the air used to physically shape the words that constitute cyclical discourses, futile dialogues and fervent denials of climate change. They reveal publicly canvassed suspended private moments of cognition/reflection, glimpses of emotion, unconscious ticks, and dubious authenticity.

Dank, humid, moist. Foul, fetid, rank.

The subconscious tendency to mirror breathing patterns has physiological effects on the viewer, inducing a hyperventilated claustrophobia and involuntary proximity to the mouths of our elected rank.

Under pressure, gas becomes light and heat

Under pressure, gas becomes light and heat is a constellation of Suns. 74.9% hydrogen, 25.1% helium, the gaseous composition of our star, the Sun, recreated in a bag, with pressure applied.

breath of Venus, breath of Mars (2014)

Atmosphere of Venus and Mars recreated in a bag with air plant.

breath of Venus

The Weather People are Reading a Script

Gallium drips from a block in the gallery space and splatters across the floor. An eerie weather event inside the exhibition.

Historical accounts of unusual atmospheric events, such as ‘blood rain’, and ‘burnt sky’ are portents of environmental cataclysm. These accounts mirror some of the aesthetic consequences of human geoengineering the environment to combat climate change. Past notions of the apocalypse may be reflected in the aesthetic future of our environment. We live in a time where the human ability to affect large scale environmental change has caught up with human compulsion to imagine our great catastrophe(s).

You will always be wanted by me (2015)

Of the 200-400 billion stars in our galaxy, only 9096 are visible to us at night.

In the depths of a vault in a mountainside in Switzerland lays a cosmos of coordinates for billions of as yet unnamed, invisible stars.

The International Star Registry offers a naming service for the invisible bulk of stars that constitute our galaxy. Most of them are small burning ember Red Dwarf stars, unremarkable to science and unseen by most. Red Dwarfs are slow burning, likely the last beacons left in the universe after around 10 trillion years.

I lost about two weeks of my life trawling this archive for the names of stars that may yield a glimpse of a narrative, a hyperbolic hollering into space, or reveal a sense of the suburban sublime: an attempt to connect with the magnitude of space and the unfathomable depth of tangled emotions- longing, love, regret. The names aren’t used by astronomers, who mostly use a bland formula of letters and numbers that parsimoniously describe the physical attributes and relative location of the star, but they do exist in the vault, and in the hands of the purchaser.

Over the last nine months I’ve been looking closer that some of these stars, to see them as both a lover and astronomer. Performing poetry and spectral analysis to know them, to recreate their colour signature in smoke, and gaze at them again.

My interests are in both the fruits of knowledge that spectral analysis can deliver, such as the elemental composition of the star, but also the modes of finding a sense of ownership in the vastness of space and comfort with our place in it; via the internet; via the experience of emotion; via a naming certificate sent express from the International Star Registry (they have offices throughout the world).

The romance of naming a star exists partly in the universe, partly in a vault in Switzerland, but mostly in the imagination.

Let’s gaze at them.

You will always be wanted by me is a one-to-one performance to be exhibited at the Proximity Festival, 2015, and The MCA Art Bar "Golden Hour" Curated by Kate Scardifield, April 2016, and exists as a video series.

You Will Always Be Wanted By Me

The Great Dying

The sensor sits on the table in my studio. It flashes 20.4 for about 20 minutes, and I check it compulsively.

The time between each flash holds my expectation that it will alter. Everything feels the same, but it changes to 20.3 for no perceivable reason. I’m frustrated that I can only see numbers, and not the subtleties in the air that they speak for.

All the research says that it should be at 20.9 - that it’s dangerous for oxygen levels to fall below 19.5 and lethal to fall to 15 over prolonged breathing.

The thing that altered the numbers is unseen to me. Of course, I am breathing and that could change it. But I’ve been breathing from the beginning. I move the sensor to the open door. It’s the third floor and the view is almost shamefully expansive for an inner-city apartment. It feels as though the air should be fresher here; cleaner or purer perhaps. But no, the numbers remain unchanged.

Without the numbers, it is easy to forget about the air.

DESCRIPTION

The Great Dying is a minimalist installation located in the site of the worst air pollution in the UK.

The sound of the overhead motorway mixes with the roundabout traffic.

Under the overpass is a structure, a rough white cube, about the size of a domestic garage.

There is a door on the left of the front face of the structure through which you’re invited to enter. The internal walls are perfect white with diffuse white lighting, 3.5 metres in each direction, and the space appears empty. There is a perceptible increase in temperature. Mounted in the middle of the wall on the right hand side, is a small prosaic electronic device that disrupts the minimal interior. It’s about the size of an apple. Digital numbers flash on its small face, three seconds on, three seconds off. On: 20.4; off; on: 20.3.

The device is monitoring the levels of oxygen in the room.

Though it’s invisible, into the space the air of The Great Dying is being released. It is being released because you are there.

The period known as “The Great Dying” occurred about 252.5 million years ago, and was the biggest extinction event in Earth’s history with as many as 90% of all species on land, and in the oceans dying out. The era coincides with radical changes to the air. It has low levels of oxygen, around half what we have today, and high levels of carbon dioxide. This air is unable to sustain the aerobic life that is familiar to us today.

The air has a subtle flavour of soda water, and a calming effect on the breath. The effects are subtle.

The sensor continues to announce the oxygen density, vacillating between normal levels of 20.9, and levels that reflect those of the Great Dying, about 10. Tension mounts with each flash as the number declines and builds towards the tipping point, set to 18. Should the oxygen level reach this tipping point, the sensor alarm will sound, the small digital face will flash red, and the space is evacuated and reset.

The Airrarium (2015)

Presented at Underbelly Arts 2015 on Cockatoo Island, The Airrarium presents the audience with the opportunity to taste the air from different eras in Earth's evolution.

The history of air and the history of life are entangled.

300-350 million years ago oxygen levels were nearly twice what they are today, and could support megafauna and flora.

Then, 252.5 million years ago, the greatest extinction in Earth’s history killed 93% of all species and coincided with some of the highest levels of carbon dioxide, leaving only half the oxygen that we have today.

How might these airs make you feel? What do they taste like, or smell like? How might they affect your body and your consciousness?

Taste some of these air at The Airarrium with Emily Parsons-Lord.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

This project was assisted by a grant from Arts NSW, an agency of the New South Wales Government and supported by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian State and Territory Governments. The program is administered by the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA).

There is nothing accidental or surprising about this...

There is Nothing Accidental or Surprising About This is a long term artwork that uses tree rings to record the human activity and changes to climate as a living memento mori, a memorial, a monument to this radical and rapacious Anthropocene.

Over the course of three years the artist will consciously falsify the records of tree ring growth in young pine trees, including one Wollemi Pine, by manipulating their climatic and environmental conditions to reflect those of the Great Dying - the greatest extinction event in Earth's history. The pine will also be symbolically exposed to spoken discourses about climate change.

Wollemi Pine is a native pine that was thought extinct until 1994 when they were discovered in a National Park in NSW. There are only one hundred pines left in natural habitats. They are living fossils. Teetering on the brink of extinction, these trees have borne witness to the changes in climate for two hundred million years.

Over the first three years of this project Emily will live with the pines in a simulacrum of the Great Dying era, whilst engaging with the climate debate. A series of works document the pines: video, image, performance and talks, are created, before the trees are permanently planted and left to record the actual climate conditions of Adelainde. As an out-of-place species in South Australia, these pines will track the passage of time by their growth rings and form part of a century/millennia long performance... or succumb to the heat.

Busied and bruised with looking (2015)

The title, Busied and bruised with looking…, is a phrase used by astronomer Percival Lowell, who was convinced that there were canals on Mars. Lowell heard from an Italian astronomer, Schepparelli, about "canali" on Mars, which he mistranslated as "canal", but is more accurately translated as "channels". Lowell turned his telescope towards Mars and started to map the “canals” he was seeing, speculating on the last desperate attempts of a civilization to contrive their preservation by channeling water from the poles. However, no other astronomer has seen these canals. Recently, an optometrist examining the configuration of Lowell’s telescope reasoned that Lowell was probably mapping the floaters and growing cataracts on the lens of his own eye. Lowell’s story highlights cultural and biological concerns associated with looking. Scientific apparatuses augment the constraints of human biology, and human culture and imagination seek and shape narratives about the subject that is looked at. Scientific imaging is deeply entwined with the history of photography, measurement, and observation. Photography enhanced the scientific claim to objectivity and science facilitated photography’s perceived alignment with truth.

The provocation for this work is to photograph the air. I am interested in how the invisible nature of air effects our understanding of it. The photograph has long and entangled history with expectations of veracity, and record, hence I took photographs of the air by matching the ISO of the film stock to the density of the air, taking humidity and air pressure readings into account.

The material invisibility of air is being used to explored the material nature of film, and the parameters of representation. In “Clear Blue Sky at 3200iso”, I have an image of clear blue sky under a light microscope at 500x. It is clearly not clear. The dirty speckles reveal the material nature of photography’s silver grains. But what is the image of? Have I got an image of the air, or is it simply an image of silver grains? Where is the air in that image? Is it in-between the grains?

To get closer to the silver gains, I used the process of ‘scanning electron microscopy’ (SEM), to investigate the spaces in-between the silver grains, and the grains themselves. The SEM requires the sample to be placed in a vacuum chamber, eliminating the interference of the actual air (as distinct from the representation of it) in between eye, lens, and sample. Electrons are fired at the sample and their path recorded to create an image of the grain.